In some peer to peer communications systems there are a limited amount of air link resources available for peer discovery broadcast signaling. Congestion in the system may, and often does, vary widely over time. Sometimes there may be only a few devices which desire to broadcast peer discovery signals, and each device may be able to acquire and use a peer discovery resource which is not being used by any other device in its vicinity. However, at other times there may be a very large number of devices which desire to broadcast peer discovery signals, and there may not be enough peer discovery resources available for each device to select a unique resource. As a result, at times of high congestion it is expected that multiple users may acquire and transmit on the same peer discovery resources. This concurrent use of a common resource creates interference problems for devices attempting to recover the broadcast peer discovery signals.
Based on the above discussion it should be appreciated that there is a need for methods and apparatus for communicating data which are responsive to the network congestion environment. Methods and apparatus which tend to mitigate interference problems when network congestion is high would be especially beneficial.